Stronger Than Yesterday
by itzalliballi
Summary: Meredith hadn't been sleeping, and she looked like a zombie. She had to tell someone. And who better than her therapist? A session with Meredith. Contains adult content.


**Warning: Contains child abuse. Read at your own risk.**

**I own nothing.**

The room was too boring for you. It was perfectly square- the walls were a smooth beige, and the couch was complimentary in a way, but mostly, it just blended in to complete the absolute bore that the room had become. Yet, somehow in all the monotony, you had found solace in that room, even with the fish tank that you'd spent hours upon hours staring at when you should have been talking. Talk in this room was not cheap. Whoever coined that phrase, had clearly never paid two hundred dollars an hour for a therapist. And that was with the hospital discount you got for working there. You winced for anyone who paid that woman full price. Not that she didn't deserve it, she really was terrific at her job. You figured she earned every penny. She probably has a few issues of her own after listening to everyone else's problems.

It was now your twenty-second visit. Yes, that's right, you were a regular now. You'd never thought you'd be a regular to anywhere but a bar, but it had happened. Most visits you discussed daily dilemmas, or topics already covered. Your morals as a doctor sometimes almost being compromised, Derek being unable to fully break it off with Rose, Mark becoming more and more attractive the closer you got to him, your dead mother, or your fath- your Thatcher that apparently spent sixteen hours of his day getting drunk. You only knew this from Lexie. You hadn't spoken to him in months, nor did you really want to. You didn't care about him anymore, but you did care about Lexie, and so you listened while she ranted- even when it hurt. But today you didn't want to talk about any of those things. Today you had no patients, you weren't even really needed at the hospital. In fact you were in jeans and a t-shirt. She'd looked surprised when she first saw you. But you pointed out that you did own clothes that weren't scrubs, and she had simply nodded and allowed you to sit down. You'd been having nightmares, and it'd nearly driven you crazy. Between the eye twitches and the continually darkening circles around your eyes that even concealer didn't help anymore, you decided it was time to talk.

"I was abused." You let out a big gust of air from your lungs after you say it. It felt like you'd been sitting on the bottom of a pool in the deep end for ages, and you'd finally decided to come up for air. You weren't sure if you felt relieved, or if you felt like a failure for giving up. It was a close call, you realized. You still couldn't meet her eye, but she didn't seem to mind, or force you to- which was very unlike her. She was big on forcing you to face your fears and admissions. Maybe she realized how hard it was for you to say that out loud. In your thirty years of life, it was the first time you'd ever said those words out loud. You had wanted to say it so many times, and you had come close on three occasions. You remember each of them, because you were always shocked that the words seemed like they could fly out so easily. You'd talked yourself out of it each time though. You told yourself that they already thought you were too dark and twisty as it was, add in sexual abuse, and you were a poster girl for a walking disaster.

You finally gain the courage to look at her, and you were relieved that she didn't look like she felt sorry for you. That was your biggest fear. You did not want pity. Pity was for people who made mistakes. Pity was not for the victim. You had been the victim. You'd been a small child, and you'd been abused. Twice actually, but that didn't really matter. Both of them left you with the same feeling- shame. You were so ashamed.

They'd both told you that it was your fault, and most importantly, who would believe a little five year old over a seventeen year old guy- a man, the first one had said. You had believed him. You'd finally given up on your father ever coming back for you, and your mother didn't make an appearance enough for you to make an argument, even if you had tried. You were practically an orphan that the state hadn't quite caught onto yet, but you just knew that the state would step in soon. There were always stories on the news of kids being taken away from bad situations. You'd spent countless nights- months even waiting for them to show up at your door. Not that you would have answered. You knew better than to open doors for strangers. It was just a fantasy of yours that you dwelled on whenever he was around.

His mom was your sitter, but she had to run to the store for a few groceries, and she had trusted him to watch you. To make sure you didn't hurt yourself. After the first time she came back, and you seemed unharmed, she began to leave more often, for longer amounts of time. Leaving you with him, who you really hated. He'd taken you to his room, always locking the door behind him once he carried you over the threshold. He was sick like that. He'd carried you as if you were his lovely bride going into your new home. You had fought him. You had kicked and screamed against him, cried out that you were just a little girl, but he seemed to like that most about you. That you had no experience.

You didn't know if he was a bad kisser, or if his grip on your wrists were too tight. You didn't know anything, and he wanted to teach you. He said you would have to learn eventually, and there was no time like the present. Six months passed before he got a girlfriend and stopped taking out his frustrations on you. Another month, and your mother decided it was time for you to have a new babysitter. You weren't sure why exactly, but you figured it had something to do with the fact that the woman never seemed to be home when your mother called to say she was going to be late. You'd been thankful though, you never liked when you were put to bed there. You felt dirty and used, and you were too young to know that you really had a choice.

You were eight the second time, and the guy had been twenty one, living in his mother's basement. He lived next door to you, and you had trusted him. You'd spent many hours watching him in his backyard with his friends when you were younger. Your mother seemed to think the world of him. You figured it was because he told her he was going into pre-med. Even though he wasn't. You knew he was getting paid quite well for watching you. He had physically hurt you, left bruises to make you remember your punishment. You were being punished for taking up his time when he should have been making out with his girlfriend. You didn't even cry in front of him. You'd known what to expect- even the very first time it happened. You'd somehow known not to fight against him, it would have only hurt worse. You just laid limply on the bed until he left you. It went on for a year until finally your mother fired him for feeding you pizza. By then, he'd gone farther with you, you were sure, than his own girlfriend. You researched it after watching a movie about teen pregnancy. You hadn't gotten your period yet, so besides your own self respect, you had nothing to lose. By then, you didn't have much of that to begin with. It'd been stripped from you, just like your clothes.

You remember running into him a few years later, you were thirteen and at the movies with Johnny Castle, your first "boyfriend", even though he was lucky if he got to hold your hand. You reasoned to yourself that if he knew what you'd been through, he wouldn't have tried to kiss you so many times, but you couldn't be sure. You couldn't really be sure that he was any different then the other guys in your life. All of which took what they wanted from you, and abandoned you. Even if you hated them for it, at least they had noticed you. He saw you before you saw him, and the sickening smile on his face let you know that he didn't see you as you were then, but the you that was in his mother's bed when you were eight. He wasn't with the same girl anymore, and you felt relief for her. She seemed nice, she didn't deserve a sick fuck like him.

By the time you were thirteen, you knew that it hadn't been your fault. You knew, even though sometimes it was hard to accept, that you had not brought that on to yourself. It was that night in the theater that you promised yourself that no matter what guys came into your life, you would be in control of it. You broke up with Johnny after the movie, just to prove to yourself that you could leave them before they left you. He had a new girlfriend the next week, and you had cried yourself to sleep. But at least he wouldn't know that.

"Meredith." She said it like she'd been saying your name for hours, but when you glanced at your watch, you realize it'd been twenty minutes since you'd spoken. Your cheeks flushed at you looked at her again, wondering what else she had said. You should have been paying more attention, but if you could control your brain, you wouldn't have told her to begin with. So here you were, waiting for her to repeat what she knew you needed to hear, whatever that was. If you knew, you would have convinced Cristina to say it somehow, or Mark. Mark would do anything given the right compensation. It was the compensation you could never quite figure it out. You two danced a fine line, but since Addison had left, he hadn't flat out propositioned you for sex. But you knew he thought about it. You knew because you thought about it as well. It was hard to be around Mark and not think about sex, really. He had that air to him that just oozed sex appeal. It was what you loved and hated most about him.

You hated him for fixing things with Derek in times like this. Because if he hadn't, things would be different. You would know what all the nurses knew. That Mark Sloan was a sex God. He had to be, or else they would not be so pissed off that he couldn't remember their names. They wanted to sleep with him again, and they wanted him to scream out their names. He knew your name though. You'd found yourself often thinking about how he would say it if he had you pinned against a wall. You somehow doubt you would mind if he pinned you against a wall, which was very unlike you. You needed control like you needed air.

You shook those thoughts away- again. You hadn't given up on Derek either. Although, the timer was slowly ticking away. It reminded you of how hard it was for you to break up with Finn. It'd been hard- but you had done it, because in the end, there really was no competition. You loved Derek, and Finn just was not Derek. You'd thought Derek felt the same about you, but as weeks dragged on, and he still hadn't cut the string with Rose, you were getting antsy.

"Is that all you are going to say, Meredith? Are we really back to this? You staring at the fish." You could tell she was agitated, and you felt you at least owed it to her to respond. She had earned that.

"No." You nearly choked on the word alone, but shook your head to show confidence your voice did not possess. "No. We are not back to that. I'm sorry. It's just. The thing is.. I've never said that before. To anyone. Ever. I've never written it down, I've never suggested that it happened, I've never even let someone guess it. And I have been asked. When I was younger, and we were playing truth or dare, they asked me how old I was when I got my first kiss, when I lost my virginity. I lied. Without even a conscious blink of self doubt, I lied. Because, telling- because someone knowing has never been part of the plan. I've never wanted the pity, or the sorrow. I've never wanted any of the things that comes with telling. So, I've never told. But I told you. Okay. It's a big deal that I've told you."

"It is a big deal." You smiled for the first time all day. You would say it was the first time in days, but that would be a lie. You've seen Mark every single day for a week, and he, without fail, always made you smile. Even if it was a small one of thanks, or a big one just for him, he made you smile. She had made you smile and she'd only used five words. Mark would be jealous, if you ever told him. You wouldn't do that. He wouldn't get the same impact with those words, because he did not know. You doubted he would ever know.

You'd been avoiding Cristina. She had a new boyfriend. A nurse. You couldn't believe it either, but she seemed happy, so you kept the comments that you knew she expected from you to yourself. The only thing she'd really said to you lately was that you look like shit. And you weren't offended, because you did. You looked and felt like shit. You remember the night you'd almost told her. It was a couple of days after the prom sex, and you had wanted to tell her the reason you loved Derek is because he didn't scare you. That you could let him have control during sex, and it didn't scare you. She wouldn't understand though, because Cristina had never been abused, and you were fairly certain she was a control freak in sex too. Cristina was a control freak with just about anything, and you aren't sure if there's an underlying reason to that. You just think she's too ambitious for her own good. You think the only real issue she has with guys is that she's afraid they are going to die on her. That she's going to be left the way her father had left her mother. She wasn't like her mother though, you had wanted to point it out to her once. She was not a woman that needed to be taken care of by a man, and that made her different than her mother. That made her a survivor. You think it's really the only reason she managed to survive Burke leaving her. You think she figured he was going to die sooner or later anyway.

"It's a big deal." You repeat her words, because you want the sense of relief to wash back over you, but you found that it doesn't have the same effect when you say it. Probably because you had said it first. There was no relief, just sorrow. You could feel the tears flowing down your cheek, and still you found no pity on her face. "I was abused." You repeat the words, this time lifting your chin. "But I'm stronger now."

"You are stronger now, Meredith."


End file.
